Fantasy Worlds at the Brisbane Writers Festival

This will be exciting! Appearance at the Brisbane Writers Festival 

with Garth Nix, Amie Kaufman and Jay Ktistoff!  

Blogging for TEXT

No blog here for me, today (I promise, a blog about the launch is coming soon!) But I have blogged on my publisher's website, all about the experience of winning the TEXT Prize. Here: 

https://www.textpublishing.com.au/blog/writing-and-researching-mediaeval-fantasy-and-demons-interview-with-the-2015-text-prize-winner

Launch photos! Taken at Readings in Doncaster.

 

Demons: why are they so hard to define?

The Book of Whispers is about a young knight who has to defeat demons and save the world so I had to spend a lot of research time not only brushing up on my historical knowledge of the Crusades but also on researching what demons are.


Not an easy subject! so here's my first demon list:

Reasons it's hard to write about what demons are: 

Firstly, they are tricksters, always trying to lead a  too easily distracted writer astray.

Secondly, as it become clear to me, demons are different things to different people. We're all tempted by and scared by different things.

Personally, nothing has ever frightened me more than the Japanese film Ringu, inspiration for the American The Ring series  (featuring a demonic video tape). 




Thirdly, and this is the big issue I had to work out in drafting The Book of Whispers: are they real or are they metaphoric?

In other words, do demons physically exist, or do they represent something psychological and maybe even scarier?

Bahai  Gardens 

·       The metaphoric is hard to resist. Freud connects demons to the recently dead, to what I would call ghosts. The Baha’i faith, that I first learned about while travelling through Israel researching this book, sees demons in a metaphorical way. They represent evil characteristics a person can display when tempted. Plato says a daemon of a different type inspired Socrates. This is a different kind of demon to the fallen angels who were my first concept. 

So how did I decide what Luca’s demons in The Book of Whispers would be like? The answer to that in another post. . . 

Review from Booktopia

It's nerve-racking, waiting to discover what readers will make of your story. So I was thrilled by this review: 

The Book of Whispers is a fascinating blend of history, romance and fantasy set against the backdrop of one of the most turbulent, brutal and religious periods in our history. Luca and Suzan are compelling characters who draw you into their epic adventure across the holy lands as they try to save the world from the human and demonic forces seeking to destroy the world. An engrossing read for ages 14+.

You can read more of it (and read more about other YA releases this month (I know I'm about to buy a couple!) at http://blog.booktopia.com.au/2016/09/30/7-must-read-young-adult-books-october/

4 reasons you can't resist a good vampire.

I've been writing about demons in The Book of Whispers, but this put me in mind of an earlier literary fascination of mine... Vampires. 

What monster does the word vampire conjure for you? A cloaked creature who hunts by night, with sharp fingernails and sharper teeth? Do you see eyes glittering with menace? Or do you imagine a sexy movie star with a perfect body, clear skin and a serious, soulful gaze?

While vampires might be condemned to walk eternally in the black of night, right now they are red hot. Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight series of books and movies have been viral hits. Young Adult book shelves groan under the weight of super-sized paperbacks from vampire series like Richelle Mead’s Vampire Academy  and L.J. Smith’s Vampire Diaries.  (Do teenagers read anything else?)

            Then there was the cult TV show True Blood, based on Charlaine Harris’s Sookie Stackhouse series. There’s even a rock band - Vampire Weekend. Vampires’ coffins have never been far from sight – but there are more of them than ever. What explains the popularity of our fanged friends?

1. vampires are naughty.

Let’s face it, vampires have never done what they’re told. They refuse to eat their veggies. They stay up much too late. They’re meticulous about not crossing thresholds until invited, but once in, they’re after a fix of blood. Our blood. Vampires frighten us.

            The Australian author Mudrooroo wrote a trilogy of vampire stories beginning with Underground, where a white woman vampire acts like an invader. Bram Stoker’s Dracula brought the vampire firmly into English novels. But long before them, the figure had its hold on our imagination. When Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre met the madwoman escaped from Mr Rochester’s attic, she described her as “savage... the roll of the red eyes... the lips were swelled and dark… the black eyebrows widely raised over the bloodshot eyes... it reminded me... of the foul German spectre--the Vampyre."

            But that was then. Nowadays…

2. vampires are charming.

Charlotte Bronte didn’t like Jane Austen’s fiction but the writing of both seems to have eternal life. Recently, Elizabeth Bennet came close to meeting her sad end in book and film versions of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, and now, one of Austen’s other heroines meets her match in Emma and the Vampires. But Emma’s Mr Knightly, of course, is modern and charming as well as being a blood-sucker.

These days, vampires are nurtured and desired. Women love them. A vampire partner might be asleep when you want to go shopping but at least he’ll never lose his hair - or get paunchy. Blood must be healthy – vampires seem able to control their food intake the way they control other impulses. Twilight’s Edward Cullen doesn’t just desire Bella sexually – he actually wants to eat her. But he doesn’t. Ah, for self control! That’s just another way that

3. vampires are strong.

Vampires don’t die. Anne Rice wrote Interview with the Vampire while depressed after her child’s death – and the child who cannot die, the vampire Claudia (played beautifully by Kirsten Dunst in the otherwise dreary film) is one of her most memorable creations.

            While we fear blood because of what it threatens – injury and death – vampires literally suck it up. Like bushfires and cyclones, like Hurricane Katrina which destroyed one of their favourite hunting grounds – New Orleans, Louisiana (Interview with a Vampire and the Sookie Stackhouse books) – they are a force of nature. But…

4. vampires are romantic.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single vampire in possession of eternal life must want a woman to protect. This is as true for the undead in New Orleans as it is for vampires in high school.

            Yes – for all the adults who read it on trains on the way to work, Twilight was originally published for teenaged readers. It was one of the first assaults in the supernatural takeover of Young Adult shelves. A decade and a half ago, Buffy the Vampire Slayer proved that a girl can care about her formal dress and about saving the world. Then, The Vampire Diaries features a dark haired girl torn between two supernatural loves. It would seem like a Twilight rip-off were it not based on a trilogy published in 1991. Vampires spend a lot of time at school! It’s a good thing sunlight won’t destroy them, after all.

There has always been something sexual to vampire tales. Dracula was furious when Jonathan Harker killed one of his Brides – and seduced Harker’s fiancée to the dark side in revenge. Laurell K. Hamilton’s Anita Blake series creeps closer to erotica with each installment. The vampire still comes by night. Is enthralling and powerful. Entices his prey to something dark and illicit and at the same time absolves them of blame.

            All of which brings me to the question; what do vampires mean? Fear or desire? The answer seems to be that they’re big, dark, inkblot tests. They can mean – and can be – anything we want. Perhaps that’s why we love them so much.

 (An earlier version of this article appeared as "Bite me" in Good Reading Magazine, April 2011)

cover flat

I was so excited to open the email that contained the full cover flat for The Book of Whispers. It's hard to explain just how exciting for a writer it is to see a visual representation of a world that used to exist entirely in words. 

The Book of Whispers will be in book stores next month :)

On YA reading and writing - my speech at the 2016 Text Prize event

Good evening Melbourne. It’s nice to see you all here to celebrate this year’s winner. While I’m waiting for The Book of Whispers to be released in October, I thought I’d talk about what it’s been like to watch my story—about a crusading knight who is haunted my demons—being made into a book. It’s been a lot of work and I’m thankful to my editor for her suggestions and wisdom. My manuscript has been so much improved by the work we’ve done this year.

Last year at this time I spoke about the importance of Young Adult fiction. As a teacher as well as a writer, I spend a lot of time thinking about how to get teenagers reading. I’ve recently heard that today’s teenagers actually read more words than ever before. But many read these words in Facebook posts and SMS messages and skimmed Wikipedia articles. They read pieces of stories. 

So in preparation for tonight I asked some of my students in Year 8 at Viewbank College what they like about books they read, and what keeps them involved in stories. 

All said they like suspense. I asked, Do you mean, heart pounding adventure? and they rolled their eyes.

These kids are clever. They’ve been online since they were toddlers. They don’t want clichés. They’re clever and they’ve got good teachers and they want stories that are interesting and vivid and original. And they want suspense.

They also want romance. I love how honest they are. A couple of boys admitted they like reading about romance as long as it isn’t the entire cover. What if it’s a knight and a girl he rescues? I asked. My female students had something to say about that. They said, As long as she rescues him back.

They also said they want something scary in the first chapter. So I started talking to them about The Book of Whispers. I said, I’ve got a romance, but it’s a subplot. I said, my story starts with a young knight fighting a demon. I asked if that sounds interesting.

One boy said, Wow, I can’t wait to read that. Just when I was starting to feel confident another made me keep it real.  He said, I like Speckie McGee. Cause it’s about football.

This is actually an encouraging response. I’m so glad there are books for kids who want to read about football.  This award recognises a new winner whose book is likely to be as different from mine as mine is from previous winners. But we’re all here with the same goal, to get kids reading.

Where my story came from was my interest in travel and fascination with how historical events connect to modern life.  My idea to tell a story about young people caught up in historical events came to me while I  was travelling through Turkey. The year was 2011 and I watched the Arab Spring on the news while I travelled. It’s already difficult to remember how hopeful that Arab Spring looked, when we consider how wrong things have gone.   

Towards the end of the writing process, I travelled again. Late last year, when I realised I could only write about Jerusalem authentically if I went there as well, I went into my local travel agent and mentioned that I also wanted to go to Syria. I don’t know if travel agents have been asked to look out for potential terrorists, but I think I’ve been reported to the Department of Foreign Affairs.

I’ve studied medieval literature. My medieval characters travel through Turkey and Syria of a thousand years ago on the pilgrimage that we now call the First Crusade. My characters believe they have a valid reason for their invasion and although my story is historical fantasy, there are truths in it and one of these truths is there were horrifying consequences.

So my story has history, action, the suspense that my young readers were asking for. And it has demons. There are demons that are my real bad guys. There are demons that torment people and live on human suffering and pain. These demons might thrive as well in contemporary Syria as they did in the Syria of the Crusades. My point is that it is through books that we learn about other people, that we step into other skins. And I’m sure I’m not along among story-tellers in believing that this capacity for empathy that we try to build in our stories is essential. We write because we want to play around in the skin of other people for a while, to find out what it’s like to be someone else, and we want to get it published so we can share what we’ve learned.

I’m still waiting to watch The Book of Whispers take my readers into another place, into other lives. I’m hoping my story will be able to achieve what my favourite books do, that it will expand what my readers can imagine and therefore expand their worlds.

Fiction gives teenagers a sense of empowerment that storytellers hope they keep once the covers are closed. In fiction, there are demons and we can defeat them. The readers of fiction have a unique faith that people with lives different from ours are worth trying to understand. In fiction, when people are in trouble, we can help them, we can imagine their lives getting better, and imagining something is the first step to making it happen. I imagined the crusades that I hope will seem real to my readers. In fiction, we can see the eleventh century, we can defeat demons. In fiction we can still go to Syria.  

Congratulations to all the authors who’ve been shortlisted this year and good luck to this year’s winner.

Game of Thrones blogging

I've blogged the first episode of Season 6... here

Game of Thrones season 6 episode 1 blogged

Spoiler alert!!

Did the Crusaders lead to Islamic State?

I've been working on The Book of Whispers, a novel about the First Crusade, for so long now that it's starting to feel like I spend more time in the eleventh century than in the twenty first. It's a good thing I have a time machine! But also... I can't help but be interested in media stories that draw together the two epochs that I inhabit, like this one...

http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2016/02/23/comment-did-crusades-lead-islamic-state

In this piece, Carole Cusack writes that,

The most important reason we should resist the lure of the crusade tag to any fight against jihadists is that groups like Islamic State want the West to think like that. It justified the Paris bomb attacks of November 2015 as attacks against “the Crusader nation of France”. Osama bin Laden used the same reasoning after the September 11 attacks.

By adopting the role of Crusaders, Western nations play into Islamic State’s hands. It’s how these jihadists want the West to understand itself – as implacably opposed to Islam. But it’s not, and it never has been. [my italics]

Something worth thinking about! It's lies that make enemies of Crusaders and Saracens in The Book of Whispers... and it's lies that make enemies today. We should celebrate our different religions and not let terrorists frame the way we think.

I'm off to Jerusalem with... my character Luca!

I’ve reached the stage in working on The Book of Whispers where I can’t write it any better without being in Jerusalem. So I’m going to Jerusalem. Next month. I can’t quite believe this myself.

Now, I’ve pretty much always travelled with other people. Travelling with Other People is like travelling in a bubble. My People keep at a distance the strangeness of a new place and the differentness of other people. They provide a barrier that means I don’t have to worry about newness and strangeness. Not very much. My People include someone else to help me interpret maps and menus, someone else to hide behind.

But this time, I’m fleshing out my nearly-fictional world. I need that newness and strangeness, without any barrier, without the ability to hide.  I’m travelling all by myself. Not going with friends, not joining a tour, not meeting people when I get there. A work colleague of mine today said I was brave. And the truth is, I feel brave. I’m doing something that makes me uncomfortable, and it’s scary.

How can I use this? I’m looking at The Book of Whispers manuscript, and thinking of my character, Luca. For him, joining the Crusade isn’t brave because he’s going alone (he’s in an army of hundreds of thousands) but… he’s leaving everything he knows, with no idea of when he’ll be back home. No return ticket, helpfully including details such as how long connections are at various airports, no assurance of being back in time for a loved one’s birthday. No idea at all, just a feeling that he has to go.

Jerusalem has called both of us. Luca, back in 1097 and me, now. He has an armoured horse. I wonder if a modern airplane is kind of an armour for travellers? Certainly not failsafe…

Anyway, each of us armoured the best that we can, and facing our fears, Jerusalem, here we come.  

Let the revisions commence.

Daunted?  Not me.  Gulp. Only a little.

The Text Prize and the importance of young adults reading

Last night, I was very excited to receive this year's Text Prize for Young Adult and Children's Literature (cue for big excited screams) for my manuscript The Book of Whispers. It was a lovely evening, and wonderful to meet so many of the people at Text Publishing who seem like a great team. I had to give a speech (cue for shaking knees) and this is what I said (well, kinda... this is what I planned on saying, I added some bits as well, that due to nerves, I don't remember!): 

Thanks so much  to everyone at Text Publishing for hosting this event and for offering this award for Young Adult and Children’s fiction. I’d like to acknowledge the other shortlisted writers whose manuscripts sound really exciting. 

The Text Prize has already produced so many outstanding books, across a fascinating variety of genres from memoir to tales of adolescent loss and learning how to cope. These stories  show how vibrant and exciting literature for children and young adults can be. 

The ideas for The Book of Whispers came to me while travelling through Turkey a couple of years ago. My two main characters are a young crusader knight and a girl who has been brought up in a convent. The Book of Whispers in the title refers to a locked medieval manuscript that only Luca can open and only Suzan can read. 

There are actual demons in my story and I hope they’re scary ones. Their need for suffering and pain gave me some chills while I was writing them. But I also wrote this novel  thinking about The Book of Whispers as a site of communication between people and between cultures.

I hoped that one day I’d be able to finish researching my story of a journey from Tuscany to Jerusalem by travelling through Syria. You just need to watch the news to realise why I’ve had to postpone that, but this brings me on to something else I wanted to say.

I’m a high school teacher as well as a writer and each of these practices reinforces to me the importance of literature for young people. Stories need to be valued because they build bridges between people. They let us imagine what it’s like to be another person. They let us experience lives that are not like ours. They build a capacity for emotional connection and empathy.

This is one reason why the Text Prize means so much to me.  I’m really excited and humbled to be following in the footsteps of the previous winners, and I think in creating stories that are – hopefully – enlightening  and understanding – we’re all doing something really important for today’s young readers.

So thank you.

 

The Text Prize shortlisting

Now, this is something that I'm excited about...

Text Prize

THE TEXT PRIZE FOR YOUNG ADULT & CHILDREN'S WRITING

---

2015 SHORTLIST ANNOUNCEMENT

Awarded annually to the best manuscript written for young adults and children, the Text Prize has unearthed extraordinary, multi-award-winning novels and launched international publishing careers. The winner receives $10,000 and a publishing contract with Text Publishing.      

Four outstanding manuscripts have been selected from 268 entries to make up the shortlist for the $10,000 Text Prize, awarded annually to the best unpublished manuscript for teenagers and children.  

NEVERLAND by Margot McGovern

Margot McGovern is a freelance writer and reviewer who contributes to a number of leading literary publications. She is a former associate editor of Ride On magazine and lives in Perth.

AGATHA ABEL MEETS HER MAKER by Sophie Overett

Sophie Overett is a cultural producer and writer in Brisbane. She was a Young Writer in Residence at the Katharine Susannah Prichard Writers Centre in 2014 and in 2015 is a Queensland Literary Fellow.

SOLSTICE by Mark Russell

Mark Russell is a writer whose work has appeared in publications including Inside Film and the Canberra Times. Solstice was originally written as a screenplay, which won a Screen Australia Development Grant in 2010. He lives in Melbourne.

THE BOOK OF WHISPERS by Kimberley Starr

Kimberley Starr is a teacher and author based in Melbourne. Her debut novel, The Kingdom Where Nobody Dies, won the 2003 Queensland Premier’s Literary Award for Best Emerging Author.

The winner of the 2015 Text Prize will be announced on Thursday 28 May at an event in Melbourne.

The 2014 winner, How to Be Happy by David Burton, will be published in September.

The Book of Whispers... author's notebook

A Young Adult manuscript I've been working on, The Book of Whispers, takes as is premise the idea that the First Crusade (year 1098) was inspired by demons who wanted to get a holy book of their own to Jerusalem. It tells the story of Luca,  a young Italian knight who is one of the only people who can see demons,  and Suzan,  who is the last speaker of the dying language the book is written in.

page from The Book of Whispers notebook

Readers often ask where writers gets their ideas from? The answer is everywhere--but a more interesting—well, to me, anyway—question is what do writers keep their ideas in?  The answer is, a notebook! It's not quite the same thing as a  journal. I have one of those, too, that I mainly write in when I'm traveling. But for each manuscript I have a notebook that's a book of ideas. The Book of Whispers has been created alongside my favourite ever notebook. I've got postcards and printouts and sketches pasted into a large soft Moleskin notebook,  along with notes about my research and ideas about settings and characters and plot and, for this novel, about the world of demons.

More than anything else I've written, this story required lots of fun research... I started with a trip to Turkey! And at home, I read about demons and medieval relics, and if course, the crusades! So I've posted a couple of pages from my notebook (many containing details I've subsequently changed or omitted... a notebook is always a work in progress).

page from The Book of Whispers notebook

 

The One with That Guy.

Prowling a Kyoto evening search of the world's best Indian food (where else would you go?)
On the way, I inadvertently became part of the entourage of Someone who clearly needs a capital S. You know-- Mr Celebrity. That Guy. Video and still cameras, long microphones on even longer poles, surrounded him -- and a cluster of men and women all far taller and younger than him who nodded excitedly when he paused and laughed uproariously when he spoke. He was walking my way, so they were all walking my way--I was walking our way; I was part of Them. 

I was walking down Kiyamachi Street, Kyoto, with That Guy. 

A woman walking the opposite direction clutched her partner's arm and looked excited enough to faint. That Guy was Brad Pitt, Leonardo Dicaprio, George Clooney maybe (except out of shape and short and wearing a baggy cricket jumper).You can't see his face in my photo. It probably doesn't matter.That Guy has a thousand faces. Ironic, really.

Oh yeah, the food wasn't that special, and I also saw the Golden Pagoda.

Breathtaking, really. Surrounded by squealing photographers. I could have been excited enough to faint.

Seriously, breathtaking.

Kyoto.What is the collective noun for butterflies?

Spent the day meandering through temples then on through the timber-housed, cobbled streets of Gion. First sight of a real life Geisha was like seeing Cinderella. Then I saw more and more of them, and the simpler but pretty style of dozens of ordinary Japanese girls in bright, pretty kimonos and sashes. Life must be strange for a geisha. Of course, no woman would go out dressed like that and not expect to be stared at. But on the streets of Gion, every few metres they are stopped by tourists for photos, and the geishas seem to freeze in time and space--the breeze itself seems to dart around them. The baubles in their hair, their marzipan-white faces and gem-bright kimonos give them the look of candied butterflies.

l googled it. The collective noun for butterflies is either a swarm or a flutter. I'll go with flutter. A flutter of kimonos. Kyoto is beautiful.

(Grrr at centred text, my software won't let me change the justification on my phone!  I'll fix it when I get home)

Takayama: a few lists about Japan.

I'm staying in a gorgeous riverside antique ryokan (small house hotel) run by a family that seems obsessed with antique things. There is a samurai suit of armour in the foyer downstairs along with shelves of old pottery and musty old books that look even more mysterious than normal locked up books because I wouldn't be able to read them, even with a key. Well, not that kind of key. As mysterious as street signs. 

Up a very steep set of stairs with a suitcase large enough to make the ryokan owners laugh to a surprisingly large room that is actually three rooms put together, with sliding paper doors between each and tatami mats in the floors. I wase served a lovely Japanese style dinner in one of these rooms, sitting on the floor at what looks like a large coffee table, while futons were rolled out on the floor in the next room and someone's baby cried loudly very close by as a reminder that this is reality, not an idyllic episode of Getaway.

Times I need to change my shoes in a ryokan (using a quick midday pitstop as an example): coming into the ryokan, going into my room, going out of my room, going into the toilets (there are shared slippers specially offered for that, with toilet slippers printed on them in gold foil like airport novel titles), coming out of the toilets, walking down the hall, going into my room, coming out of my room, walking down the stairs, preparing to leave the ryokan.

Hardest thing to find: an ATM , closely followed by accommodation that accepts Visa cards.

Strangest thing I've found in a bathroom: Not the electric toilet seats, not even the bathtub built to be used by an entire family all at the same time (and filled with water already used by the previous family!)but... the Aladdin's cave/ KingTut's tomb that doubles as a washroom and features a Samurai suit of armour complete with helmet and with plates sewn together with dark blue yarn that looks like shoelaces.  

Ordering coffee in Japan

I'm usually more tempted by shoes but I'm here in Japan because of an Air Asia on-sale impulse buy from way back in 2013. My flight left after midnight with a 'slight delay' for 'operational reasons' (Code for: we're not going to tell you) and I didn't preorder food (it isn't included in the fare) so wasn't irritated with interruptions while trying to doze. 

I was upgraded for our next leg--yay! So was in some comfort for the next delay, when the captain was very upfront about telling us why. A drunk man was refusing to leave his seat in the exit  row. The dispute lasted an hour. Security was called and succeeded in getting him to the door of the plane, where he continued arguing. I was tempted to do the heroic thing, leaping to my feet and pushing him out the door myself. 

Business class was nice although I still don't really understand why I couldn't have a coffee (there seemed to be 3 or 4 different reasons, all of which entailed pointing at photographs of coffee and nodding). But they were quite clear about why I couldn't have even a single beer. Perhaps it was the drunk refuser who decided for them. The bar was 'closed'.

Most amusing meal: ramen in the hotel cafe, that turned out to be linguine carbonara.

Most Lost in Translation moment: stewardess trying to explain why I couldn't have coffee.

How many words per day?

Over the years, I've collected rumours about how much writers write. I used to think this was for inspiration. So, what has inspired me? In 'On Writing', Stephen King says he writes 2000 words a day so (get this) completes an 180,000 word novel in THREE MONTHS. I was at the Brisbane Writers Festival in the early noughties (or maybe the late nineties) where Matthew Reilly (on a panel with Kim Wilkins who writes so many books she needs two selves and is also Kimberley Freeman)... anyway, Reilly said sometimes he writes more than 9000 words a day when he nears the end of a novel. But, he added, he wasn't exactly writing anything literary so didn't need to worry about characters.

I haven't read any Reilly but King does (ahem) the odd memorable character and Freeman/Wilkins is frankly pretty amazing. And a writer who really worries about characters (or, if 'worries' isn't the right word, someone who creates truly authentic, memorable characters) is Joyce Carol Oates, who apparently writes from 8-1 every day and in that time has quite possibly written more books than I've read.

I'm in my forties and have published one novel, word count about 60,000 words. I've been writing all my life, so (leaving out the unpublished stuff under my metaphorical mattress i.e. on my hard drive) that's 1.5 words per day. One of my literature lecturers once said that Ernest Hemmingway wrote 500 words a day, so he could concentrate on quality. I write 1.5 words per day, so I can concentrate on deciding whether or not to get my hair recoloured, on whether the calories in a piece of cheese are worth it, on what to wear out on Friday, on Facebook, and on picking off bits of nail polish.

On a positive note, today I've written 600, which is well above average. Even more if blog posts count. If I ever meet Stephen King, I'll have to ask.